crime of every description , while the life between these two extremes passes unnoted . These differences are evident in the country press and in the metropolitan press. They are illustrated by a comparison of the society columns in these two classes of papers. The country
weekly gives both relatively and sometimes absolutely a larger proportion of its space to purely social events than does the daily of the large city . Every trifling event is chronicled and its im
portance magnified , yet while its exaggerations are prone to be excessive, they are easily detected and discounted . All weddings are described as pretty, all brides are beautiful, all bridegrooms are successful, both are always popular in the community, the wedding repast is sumptuous or elegant, and the presents re ceived are numerous and valuable. The facts may often be precisely the reverse , but in a small community the rhetorical
descriptions deceive no one and presumably will not mislead the future historian .
These elaborate descriptions of social events are found in
the metropolitan dailies only in exceptional cases, — the vast majority of weddings and of social events go unchronicled by the press. In such as are chronicled, a different set of conven tional phrases is used . Barring change in names , the society columns vary little from one social season to another. The historian is rarely concerned with the names that fill these
columns, the inaccuracies that inevitably creep in do not vitiate his use of them in his reconstruction of the past since this re
construction must concern itself less with the individual than with the type. The dinner party or the theater party may supplant the ball, skating may take the place of thé dansant, new experiments in social entertainment may be introduced to
whet the jaded appetites of the professional social classes, - it is with this that the historian is concerned in his reconstruction of social life rather than with the individuals through whom
they are carried out. The genial editor who describes in florid
language the social events of a country village is in effect not so much describing these events as he is recording his own natural characteristics, the family ties that bind together all parts of the village, the common desire to give every one “ a
